by David Klass
Loud parrot shriek snaps me out of it. I pivot. Gisco has just bitten off Apollo’s head. Headless parrot runs around in a circle and then stumbles off cliff and follows its master, flapping down into the molten abyss.
Gisco and I both run back to Eko.
77
“Leave me,” Eko whispers.
“No way,” I tell her. “Come, let’s fly off this rock together, before it vaporizes.”
“I can’t. Look. My jacket!”
I look. The beam from Dargon’s laser gun sliced through her antigravity jacket. It’s in tatters. Two humans. One dog. Only two functional flying jackets.
“Just go,” she urges again. “Save yourselves.”
I pick her up in my arms.
“No, Jack. I’m too heavy. You can’t fly with the extra weight. Leave me.”
“I’m the beacon of hope,” I remind her, “and I have mental powers you never dreamed of. Now be quiet.”
He’s right. Be silent. Gisco seconds the motion.
“But we’ll never get off the ground …” Eko objects.
“We are off the ground,” I tell her.
And we are. Fifteen feet off the volcanic cliff, soaring up and out over the Atlantic.
Not a second too soon. A rumble wells up from deep in the bowels of the volcano below us. It builds and builds. Clouds of steam and gas flicker up over the lip of the crater in a red and orange fireworks display.
Fly faster, Gisco urges. It’s about to blow its cork.
The rumbling gets louder, swelling and roaring, till it seems like the volcano will erupt at any second.
Everything that can get off the island is doing so in a hurry. Birds rise from the trees, circle and caw, and then speed off over the Atlantic. Bats fly out of caves. Dogs, goats, and even pigs wade into the ocean and swim straight out to sea, while rats throw themselves off rocky cliffs.
I see the trawler fleet trying to put to sea. But the big ships were being refitted and were moored to the dock. Men are desperately casting off and jumping aboard.
This is my top speed right now, I tell Gisco, as I clasp Eko tightly. You go on ahead. We’ll catch up.
“You both need to go,” Eko pleads. “Drop me in the ocean, Jack. I’m dying anyway.” She struggles to get loose.
I hold her even tighter. “You’re not going anywhere.”
I’m staying with you two, Gisco announces. We should have enough time to get away. Based on my unparalleled knowledge of vulcan speleology, this baby won’t erupt for another half hour.
Hardly are the words out of his telepathic mouth when the volcanic island rises to meet afternoon sun. Never saw anything like it. Hope I never do again. But it is glorious. Red fingers of molten rock claw up from the depths, reaching through white clouds as if to rip apart the curtain of blue sky.
I always thought an eruption was a quick, one-time event, like a bomb detonating. This powder keg keeps exploding and exploding.
The rock-splitting chain reaction of a mountain range ripping itself apart from inside.
The sibilant screech of rivers of molten lava searing red snake-like trails into the cold Atlantic.
The meteoric hiss as huge boulders take wing, spewed up from the crater, like a flock of newly hatched comets. Any one of them will kill us if it hits us, but our luck holds.
I see them raining down on the trawler fleet. One ship after another buckles and flips.
The green-domed entrance to Dargon’s reef information center melts as a geyser of magma shoots up from the depths. Gone is the map room with all its stolen information about the location of the seamounts.
We’re very high up now. Above the inky dust cloud that spreads out over what used to be Dargon’s island. There’s not much island left. Now it’s just lava and water, and even that is soon hidden by volcanic soot.
But we’re not down in that darkness. We’re up in the clear heavens. It feels like a day trip to paradise. Warm sunlight. Endless layers of unsullied cloud.
I feel Firestorm changing. Look down at it in my hand. It’s turned blue-green, the color of the ocean far below. It feels smooth and cool. I know what it wants.
I hold it for a second more and then let it drop. It falls like a turquoise teardrop. I think I see it land with a tiny splash. Whales and dolphins circle the spot.
“Strange,” Eko whispers.
“What’s that?” I ask her.
“That I’m dying.”
“You’re not. Cut it out.”
“All the other prophecies were true,” she gasps. “You did just what the Mysterious Kidah decreed. Strange that what he said about the two of us will never come to pass.”
“What did he say?” I ask.
She looks up at me as we soar in and out of clouds. “Why did you think I was so hard on you in that barn?”
“You were teaching me how to defend myself. Time was short. You had to do what you did. I forgive you.”
“I had another reason,” Eko admits. “The Mysterious Kidah said that if you found Firestorm, we would one day be married. Have long lives together. Our descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. So I was breaking in a future husband. But apparently even the Mysterious Kidah is wrong sometimes …”
“No, he wasn’t wrong …”
Her body quivers. The lovely eyes half close. “Goodbye, Jack. I’m glad we had some time together.”
“You can’t die,” I plead. “You’re the only one who understands me. The key to my past. The key to my future.”
Somehow she finds the strength to raise her head and plant a final soft kiss on my lips, and whisper, “Farewell.”
“No,” I say. “You can’t die! Fight it, Eko! Stay!”
But I’m losing her. I can feel her slipping through my fingers. No, wait. She’s not slipping away because she’s dying. And I’m not dropping her, either.
She’s blinking out!
Eko feels it, too. Holds me tighter. Whispers my name in a frightened voice. “Jack.” The pressure of her fingers on my arms lightens, lingers on my skin, and then vanishes. She’s gone. Like a beam of light. Poof.
Gisco!
I saw it.
Dargon was right! We’re all going to blink out!
No. We would have gone together: We’re staying, Jack. We’re okay. She’s the only one who’s gone.
Where?
I don’t know, old bean, the faithful flying hound admits, tears running down his snout. But how I’ll miss her! We crossed the centuries together. I’m so broken up over this, I actually feel like I’m breaking up.
I look over. He is breaking up! Dissolving into air.
Don’t go, Gisco! You’re all I have left. I don’t know where to go or what to do next! Stay! I beg you.
Don’t worry, Jack. The one thing you can count on is that I’ll never, ever leave you, the flying fleabag promises, and promptly flickers away into nothingness.
Gone. Both of them. Like candle flames.
Dargon’s island is gone too, now, just a smudge of dust far below.
The sun shines above me, the clouds are cottony and cheerful. It could still be a day trip to paradise.
Not only that. I think I just saved the seas. Changed the future. Accomplished my father’s grand design. The mission impossible he sent me on is over.
But I don’t feel so good about it.
No, I don’t feel good about anything. I feel empty. Drained. Terribly alone. Because I’ve lost my companions. The friends who could have helped me make sense out of it all. My sole remaining touchstones. The only way home.
Now the winds may blow me where they will. They sweep me eastward, toward Europe, and far below, the blue Atlantic churns endlessly.
Also by DAVID KLASS
Dark Angel
Home of the Braves
You Don’t Know Me
Screen Test
Danger Zone
California Blue
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I could not have written this book without the sc
holarship and wise counsel of Dave Allison of Oceana, Dr. Elliott A. Norse of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute, Dr. Les Watling of the University of Maine, and Karen Sack and Sara Holden of Greenpeace International.
I am also greatly indebted to trusted family readers Orlando Klass and Sheila Solomon Klass; my intrepid researcher, Christine Bailey; my adviser on all variety of action scenes, Ed Nicholas; my wise agent, Aaron Priest; my indefatigable copy editor, Elaine Chubb; and my peerless editor, Frances Foster.
Special thanks to my supportive wife, Giselle Benatar, and my joyfully destructive kids, Gabriel and Madeleine.
Copyright © 2006 by David Klass
All rights reserved
www.fsgkidsbooks.com
Designed by Barbara Grzeslo
eISBN 9781466806085
First eBook Edition : November 2011
First edition, 2006
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Klass, David.
Firestorm/ David Klass.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: After learning that he has been sent from the future for a special purpose, eighteen-year-old Jack receives help from an unusual dog and a shape-shifting female fighter.
[1. Space and time—Fiction. 2. Ecology—Fiction. 3. Dogs—Fiction. 4. Science fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.K67813 Fir 2006
[Fic]—dc22
